Heard about this a few weeks ago but this is the first text of the story I have seen.
In the middle of a grueling six game road trip where a very
young hockey team is away from home, the third game
of the trip ends late on a cold Canadian Saturday night. This is the
only break on the trip and the three
days between games allow them the only break
to get back home in their own
beds for a couple of days before going
back on the road. A scheduled commercial flight waits for them at
Toronto's International Airport for the short flight home; they could be home by
midnight. This plane departs on
schedule, but without a single member of the hockey team.
Back in the locker room a vote is taken after the game was complete,
and a unanimous decision is made by this young team
to skip this flight and stay one more day. They make arrangements to
check back in the hotel and on a frozen Sunday morning charter two buses
that have no heat and begin a journey two hours straight north into a
sparsely inhabited Canada ,but where hockey is its passion. They arrive at
their destination to the surprise of the team's general manager who is there
attending his fathers wake.
After a few emotional hours, this team boards
the buses and head back for a two-hour trip back to Toronto . On the
way they ask the drivers to stop in a
tiny Canadian town because they are hungry. To the shock of the
patrons and workers at this small hockey town McDonald's, a professional team
walks out of two rickety buses and into the restaurant,
which just happens to have pictures of two members of this team on
its wall. The patrons know every single one of these players by sight
being fanatic fans of hockey in these parts. One can only imagine their
amazement of the locals seeing and entire professional hockey team
sit down and have a meal in their tiny little town in the middle of a hockey season.
After a while they board the buses and catch their same flight 24 hours later,
giving one day to their general manager.
This a true story of the Chicago Blackhawks last Saturday night and they decided to
attend Dale Tallon's fathers funeral. Its amazing that such a good story
can be found nowhere on the internet, and not even
mentioned in the Chicago papers.
Had one of the Blackhawks got into a fight and punched some drunk in a Toronto bar, or said something derogatory about some ex-girlfriend, it would be plastered all over papers and the television.
This being said, its hard to imagine any professional football, basketball
or baseball team doing this, but the members
of the Blackhawks claim any "hockey" team would have done this.
This is one reason I continue to be a huge hockey fan, and another reason I am
excited about this Chicago team.
I thought I would share as this story appears to have gone unnoticed.
EDIT: ALSO IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED THE BLACKHAWKS GAME WILL BE STREAMED ON WWW.ATDHE.NET AT 730 LOCAL TIME